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10 good reasons to live in Iceland

There is so much that I like about Iceland, and I’m still hearing about or reading about new things that convince me that it really is the most civilised place on earth. Here are some Icelandic ideas and customs that I really like the sound of. (Icelandic friends, you can feel free to tell me if I am completely crazy…)

1. Knitting is taught in schools. In a country with so many sheep, woollen products and long winters, this would be a really useful skill to have. I’m sure this early exposure to creativity must have something to do with why so many Icelanders continue to be creative later in life. Also, knitting in today’s busy world encourages you to slow down and enjoy an older way of doing things, not a bad thing for kids to learn.

2. Sunshine coffee. Some Icelandic villages are situated in valleys within very long, high fjords. This means that there will a couple of months where the sun does not get high enough in the sky to be seen in these areas. Can you imagine not seeing the sun AT ALL for a few weeks? On the first day when the rays of the sun do penetrate down to the village, they celebrate by having coffee, and call it “sunshine coffee” .

3. Christmas Eve books. Books are still a very popular Christmas gift in this highly literate nation. (The literacy rate is apparently 99.9% – imagine being the one person in Iceland who can’t read!) This is the bit I love – sheets are washed for Christmas Eve and after you open your new books you get to go to bed in your specially washed sheets. How cozy is that! What a great idea.

4. Leaving babies outside restaurants. This is something that visitors to Iceland often notice and comment on, but in a shocked way like “How can you possibly think your baby will be safe left outside unattended?” Well, because it’s a good way to give them fresh air and also allow you some uninterrupted time to enjoy your meal. Really, no one is going to come along and steal the babies.

6. You get what you pay for. In Iceland, you pay more for things, but they are of high quality. Here, you can pay a lot for things that are really badly made and fall apart, or you can pay a little for things and you can expect them to fall apart. It’s harder to get high quality items generally. This high quality mentality also comes through in the way that Iceland doesn’t “do” cheap, tacky tourist attractions.

These next ideas all highlight what a fair, equal and non-judgmental society Iceland is. Ok, so it’s not perfect, and women are still paid less than men, but it’s better than most places in terms of treating people as individuals and letting them do their own thing.

7. Husband’s day. This is a timely one as it was only last week. Here in the UK, the way women generally speak about men is to describe everything they do as “useless”, and there is a lot of “typical man” disparaging sentiments . The idea of having a special day where it would be perfectly normal to buy your husband flowers and cook him a special meal would be laughed out of town. Yet in an egalitarian society like Iceland, even the men get their own special day. 🙂

8. Not judging single mothers. Iceland does have a high proportion of babies born outside wedlock. People aren’t judgmental about it. Apparently, it is because there is a long tradition of single mothers, as throughout history, most of the men were involved in fishing and had more chance of dying young and leaving them on their own.

9. Calling people by their first names. This is partly due to having patronyms rather than surnames, and partly down to treating everyone the same regardless of their age or job. The equivalent of “Mr” or “Mrs” is rarely used, and children can even call their teachers by their first names.

Excuse me, Mr President? I mean, Ólafur…

10. The swimming pool culture. I’ve mentioned this before as a great thing to do as a tourist to see real local life. Unfortunately, in my country a lot of people wouldn’t dream of sitting in a pool/hot tub with people they work with or even with their friends. They would be too self-conscious about themselves and find it too weird to see others in their swimming costumes or shock horror, naked in the changing areas! In Iceland, it’s no big deal, just a nice relaxing way of socialising, and I’m sure there are health benefits for all the oldies that do it.

Laugardalslaug – From wikitravel.org

Does your country have ways of thinking or customs that you are particularly proud of? Is it naive to think other countries have better ways of life than your own?

We lived in Iceland many years ago when my husband was in the military. I love that country! I wish we’d had more time & money to do more on the economy 😦 It was so beautiful and the people were so nice. I would love to go back there again someday!

Sign me up, I’m in! Seriously, just yesterday my husband asked me if I would email the couple we stayed with while we were in Iceland (retired educators) to ask them what we should do to possibly start looking for education jobs in Iceland. A long shot but one worth exploring.

Like your 10 things about Iceland. 😉
Although i dont know the tradition about sunshine coffee.. But it’s always a coffee time over there, we love coffee and make them in all flavors. You have to buy coffee from Kaffitár when you go there next time, i always do when i visit home 😉

The point you had about leaving babies outside when you go to stores and restaurant, i guess we are one of the few countrys in the world that can do that, carefree…

Kakósúpa. 😉 yummi..miss it so, nothing better when its cold and dark.

About the single mothers, well. Luckily, they are at least getting older now when they have kids now, im a product of teenage pregnancy 😉 you learn alot from that.
Although they think its “unnormal ” to be in my age and not have kids!! ( in Denmark im very normal ;-))
And they will rather have kids with a guy, but getting married!!! thats serious!.. 😉

Swimming pools, love it and miss it, i live at the swimming pools every time i visit home 🙂 we are priviliged in Iceland, with our natural sourses and hot water.

I would like to add to your list a popular avent in the winter time, we rent a sommerhouse, go with a group of friends during weekends and stay there cooking good food, bathing in the hut tub while we look at the northern lights and stars 🙂

One problem – I don’t like coffee! But I’ve had Kaffitár hot chocolate! 🙂

Actually I think most countries could do the babies thing, people are generally good. We just do a lot of unnecessary worrying about the one in a million chance of things happening…no common sense like in Iceland.

The good thing is as you get older there comes a point when people give up on the idea that you will have kids. They just stop asking and mentioning it little by little, so hang in there…

I love that so many people have summerhouses. I want one! You are lucky that it is so easy to get out of the city and immediately into nice areas. I tell you, if I get rich I am buying a holiday house in Iceland.

Védís you obviously don’t live in the West Fjords, afaik that’s the only place with the sunshine coffee (and pancakes, oh yes) tradition is upheld. In most other places in the country we don’t miss out the light in the wintertime so we don’t need to celebrate seeing the sun again.

It is not only in the West Fjords people have sunshine-coffee. Here in Borgarfjordur the shadows of some mountains does, that for maybe 4-6 weeks you only live in this shadows and when you at last get the sunshine back everyone is so happy, and then we have the wonderful sunshine-coffee and pancakes and are really really happy….and soon we have sunshine all around the clock !!

Terrific list! I like all of them. Over here, in the U.S. there ARE loads of public pools. Every summer we take my nieces and nephews to the one in the little town six miles from here. Thermopolis, Wyoming, has the biggest Hot Springs, in the world, according to them, have never checked, and it is used year round.

I want the recipe for Chocolate Soup! (Heheh sounds much better than Carrot Soup, don’t you agree? I should have checked with you first.)

I especially like the knitting being taught in school, what a terrific idea! Just knowing how to make something you can use is a great thing to teach kids, or adults for that matter.

I was a bit stumped about the babies outside. Still hemming and hawing about that one. Different. 🙂

The two things that jumped out at me:
1) The chocolate soup. I’ll have a bowl, please!

2) Leaving the babies outside seems scary to me. I was always over-protective of my kids. From the time they were born till now. And they’re grown and living all over the US. There just such a valuable commodity. It’s very trusting, but I always wanted them to be by me anyway, where I knew what was going on.

I lived there a long, long time ago. The culture is amazing! They value their children so much, that nobody would allow someone to molest a child in a carriage. I’m sure it very rarely/never happens. They think it’s healthy for the babies plus there isn’t room inside those store/cafes for a full sized pram 😀

I have never heard of anything happening to children sleeping outside, at liest nothing worse then a cat jumping on the carriage. I was born in late October and slept outside every day until the summer. It is believed to be healthy for everyone to sleep in the fresh air, freezing conditions are not a reason to skip the outside nap.

Hi, my boy is sleeping outside now as we speek. He sleeps alot longer and better outside (lucky to have clean air). I sleept outside when i was littel and a child have never ben stolen ore taking here in iceland. Also, i think averyone is awere of other children and keep an aye on them and protect 🙂

Fascinating post about a fascinating subject. Really enjoyed reading it and learnt a lot of quirky information that I didn’t know before. The picture of the babies outside reminds me of how much I would love to live in Iceland. Not just to leave my children outside, but the fact they can and have no need to worry about it just proves an Icelandic way of life would really suit me personally. Not sure my wife shares my passion but maybe if I can drag her over there sometime it might win her over 🙂

Luckily, they still abide by common sense there rather than the health and safety rubbish we have to put up with. I’m sure your wife would love it – book her a trip to the Blue Lagoon and she’ll be fine!

Sunshine coffee is more common in the countryside than Reykjavík… Remember it from the town I grew up in, just 20 minutes from Reykjavik. My house stood in the shadow of a mountain most of the year so sunshine coffee was welcome.
Don´t know if we don´t have any tacky tourist traps…. many icelanders would describe the Blue Lagoon as excactly that!;)

I know what you mean, people who live in London live a very different life to someone who lives in the rural countryside here. It sounds like a lovely tradition. I can’t imagine not seeing daylight for so long and how much you must appreciate it when it comes back. I would imagine that it’s very beautiful where you grew up.

Yes, the Blue Lagoon is your closest thing to Disney! 🙂 And even so at least it actually is worth the money for someone who is only coming to visit once and wants a unique experience that sounds really impressive to your friends. It’s good that there are no big “children’s attractions” in Iceland as those are often the tackiest. Thanks for visiting!

Are there Asian people in Iceland? Are iceland people friendly? My husband and I plan to visit in 3 year and i am praying the date will come sooner. but I’m little concern of ppl not being kind to me of my race

Dont worry. Icelanders are known for their hospitality to people all over the world. There have been groving numbers of tourists from Asia and they are welcome. People from Thailand and the Philipease are one of the biggest groop of imigrants in Iceland so dont worry, you will feel good.

hi there…i hope u have already come to iceland…but dont worry about who you are or where you come from……all people are the same…..welcome to iceland….you can contact me if you want……my email is kristin.r@simnet.is and i will pick you up at the ariprort 🙂

Thanks for the quick replied! Nice to hear there’s Thai in iceland. I’d lived in Thailand for 3 years between 1982-1985 before my family journey to United State. Iceland, New Zealnd, Ireland, and Scotland are on my list of places I would like to visit before I die.

My husband has just been offered a job and we have 2 children aged 5 and 6. I was thinking “Reykjavik?? In the middle of fields of ice and nothing fun for miles about!”.. I am also very unfit (yes, a bit too much around the middle, too) and I’ve the impression that I might be quite a minority. But it’s so tempting with the picture you have painted of the lifestyle. Do you think we would fit in? I would be worried about the children having to learn a new language (we’re Brits) and we’ve already thrown them in the deep end with German…. have you any words of wisdom for me? Oh.. one last thing.. how expensive is it really? I would want to be sure that my husband asks for the right salary so that we can actually enjoy life (reasonably!) and take the kids out and be able to afford to run the car. The other job offer is in Zurich and that’s ridiculously expensive.

Wow – what an opportunity! First thing I would recommend is to read Names for the Sea by Sarah Moss – the only “modern” expat book I have come across. It will give you a good idea of what to expect. In terms of fitness, yes, there is a big gym culture and many fit people, but also many not so fit due to a recent influx of American-style junk food. The kids would be allowed to be kids, take risks, play outside, no health and safety rubbish. I think kids pick up languages surprisingly easily, wouldn’t worry about that. And it sounds like it wouldn’t be a permanent move anyway – so why not go for it. Zurich in comparison seems to me very safe and full of expats and dull. Expensive – yes, very. And after the recent financial meltdown he may not get much choice in terms of salary. And you will likely have to furnish your house from pretty much new stuff unless you make some contacts through his work that can help you to get some used things. Let me know what you decide and if you make the move please start blogging! 🙂

Hi – I´m Icelandic and there is no reason to worry about furniture at least. There is a website bland.is that sell lot! of furniture and stuff you can haggle for. Everyone in Iceland (or nearly everyone) speaks English so that´s not a problem.
Things are quite expensive but the quiet, relaxed way of living here is so worth it.

Thing you should start by doing when you move here, take 30 min showers, I mean really hot and awesome showers. The heat and electricity here is really cheap and the water is free. Enjoy =)

I think you need to marry someone Icelandic! Very difficult for someone outside of Europe to be able to work in Iceland, unless you are in something very specialised that is worth them sorting out the bureaucracy to bring you in because no one else can do it. It would also be pretty prohibitively expensive to import a car.

What a great list! My fiance and I are going to Iceland for 2 weeks for our honeymoon in August (from the United States) and this just re-affirms our desire. I LOVE the leaving babies outside the restaurant – in the United States, we are completely paranoid about everything, and what an opposite that is!

Yes, I believe it will be “unique” – and I am hoping that this will be the positive unique, not the negative one 🙂 I will most certainly blog about Iceland! What else will I be doing there 🙂 Thanks a lot for your kind words!

I loved your list! It is so exciting for me to find another person who is as passiontae about Iceland as I am. What I am wondering though is, what are the chances of someone being able eat a fully raw vegan diet over there or even just a high raw vegan diet? Do you know anything about that?

there are number of places that offer a range of vegan/paleo/gaps friendly food. If you´re on facebook I recommend looking up a page called whole new view that recently put up a list of restaurants and links to their homepages.

Over the last several months I’ve read a bit about Iceland and I’ve decided I’d like to visit. This just cemented my notion that it really is an amazing and fascinating culture, and I am so looking forward to one day visiting such a wonderfully laid-back country
As someone who was born and raised in the United States, Iceland seems to be a breath of (literally) fresh air. I thoroughly enjoyed reading about this lovely country!

The ones that I enjoyed the most was #1, #3 and #7.
1) I don’t know how to knit, but it would be a nice skill to have as you pointed out. My mother loves to knit so she’d be in heaven!
3) It is so wonderful to find a country that loves to read. I couldn’t ever imagine living without my books, and it really bums me out when I find fellow teenagers and young adults (I’m 18,) who don’t appreciate a good book.
7) This is so wonderful. I think that men deserve to have more recognition than they usually get, especially when a lot of women sit on their butts whining and complaining about and stereotyping the whole of men, when most of them really do work hard. I think that having a Husband’s Day is a concept every country should adopt.

“I think that men deserve to have more recognition than they usually get, especially when a lot of women sit on their butts whining and complaining about and stereotyping the whole of men, when most of them really do work hard.”

This makes me laugh.

Iceland’s women have gone through hell with regard to men, as have many women around the world. Women’s rights, the rights of any minority will always be important.

Men have stereotypes because of our world’s culture, and they don’t harm the men near as much as the actions that are encouraged by our cultures hurt the women.

I love my country (iceland) but i have never been to another country exept spain but that was 8 years ago so i din’t know that iceland was this great until now cous i rellu thought it was the same in every country 😁 but there os one reason that i love most about iceland and that is that christmas …we all have something good to eat at the 24 dec and when were done eating we go strate to the gifts 😃 and as i have seen in movies santa is the only one that gives prasent and that is the only santa well we have our own santas and they are 13 brothers that give ous tiny prasents in our window every day for 13 days until christmas and that is what i love the most about iceland (sorry for my bad english im still lerning to write it )

I have been to Iceland three times and I thought that would satisfy my desire, but no…..I would love to go back! Although my paternal grandparents emigrated to America in the late 1880s, I never did hear too much about the country. My own theory about that is that they felt welcome in their new home and did not want to dwell on what they had left behind. You do not need to fear if you do not speak the language as you won’t come across too many people who do not understand and speak English. I suppose what has made it interesting for me is the fact that I have been able to contact relatives there, thanks to the great geneaology records that Iceland has always kept. I continue to locate more relatives all the time and I love keeping in touch with them.

Hi and thank you for the beautiful words about my country. I really enjoyed reading your comments exspesially because i´ve moved from Iceland to Norway and it made me remember many of the things I love about my country. It has been almost 4 years since i left and although norwegian culture isn´t so different from icelandic culture it´s just not the same. I plan to move back in the near future because I am and always will be very proud of being icelandic.

I lived in Iceland from 1983 until 1986 while in the Navy at Keflavik. It was the most enjoyable place in my 20-year career. I have one daughter born there, and I miss my Icelandic friends. Iceland is a wonderful country with the friendliest people I ever had the chance to meet in my life. It is absolutely beautiful there, and I hope to return one day.

No one has mention the Christmas cat or the lenght of the Christmas season from 24/12 -06/01 and we keep the decoration´s at least that long. Or the wisdom sentence in the Eastern eggs ( always chocolate eggs) or the Icelandic special food as “Thorramatur” . What about new year eve? You have to experience it. How many months can people stay home with the newborn baby in USA on salary ? In Iceland we can stay home many-many months

No, it’s not false at all. Icelandic women on average make around 80% of a man’s 100% AND they pay their women more than many other countries. There is no place where men and women have equal pay, Iceland is just a bit, a BIT closer to this.

You forgot woman’s day. See in Iceland we have one day for men and one for women. I personally think its better than valentine’s day. Even though valentine’s day is a good day 🙂
Today is woman’s day in Iceland ^^.
But I like this list 🙂

Like your list :-D, can I add some….. like Aurora Borealis aka Northern Light, a lot of sports activities for kids, ALWAYS clean air, great food, fly fishing in harbours, Christmas “hamborgara hryggur”, rye & flatbread, these are just 1/1000 of things you could do in Iceland while you live here.

Just returned from 5 days in Iceland. Beautiful country, beautiful scenery, the weather was gorgeous (though cold) and to see the northern lights was dream come true for me. Hope one day to return and carry on my adventure. 💜

I am English, but raised in Reykjavík, Iceland. Just wanted to add. That Iceland doesn’t only have the cleanest water, fresh air,beautiful scenery and friendly people, it also has allot of art. There is the new award winning Concert and Conference building ‘Harpa’ with state of the art sound equipment. One could go to a music event vertually every night of the year around the capital, also various art galleries. Not to mention the night life. I love Iceland…
Thank you for your list. 🙂

It is no more difficult or easy than any other language. How hard you will personally find it to learn Icelandic depends on your native language (English, Swedish, German, Norwegian and Danish will all be pretty easy starting points, French or Russian, for example, will be harder), your own particular aptitudes, and your dedication to learning (it will be almost impossible to learn any language well if you don’t have a genuine interest). All pronunciation is difficult when you are talking about sounds that do not exist in your native language. So you will probably find some sounds difficult, yes. Others would find those sounds easy but others difficult. Difficulty should be measured in terms of difference between the language to be learned and the student’s native language, it is not an absolute.

I am an American and was stationed on the base in Keflavik for two years before it was closed. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there and made some great friends who I still keep in touch with on a regular basis.

For those wanting to know the best time to visit; My grandmother visited me there at the age of 80 and we had the best time seeing all the country has to offer. If you are concerned about the cold visit in late July through August. She was a retired librarian turned artist and had to see every piece of art in Reykjavik.

We visited all the museums and while driving through the city one day we passed a restaurant where she recognized the name from some literature she had read and remembered that it had a good many paintings gracing its walls. It happened to be early afternoon when there were not many patrons and the entire staff came out of hiding to move furniture to clear her way to see each painting. That gesture is indicative of the country as a whole. Great people, fully willing to go out of their way so that a guest in their country will enjoy their experience there.

wait ..how did I come here? oh.. I was only wanting to check out some beautiful waterfalls.. and I couldn’t take my eyes off the ‘Skógafoss’.. it was mesmerizing! I did some research about place and I stumbled upon Iceland’s wiki page. To be honest, apart from learning , in my geography class, that its capital is Reykjavik, I had no idea what the country was all about. Trust me, today, I read the entire wiki page..from geography to politics to HDI; and my desire to visit Iceland slowly switched to living the rest my life there!

I even checked out the exchange rates! 😀

And then I came to your site ; which invites me to move to Iceland! ts amazing culture, commendable public spirit, abundance of natural beapositivity which sprinkles from each one of the persons here is irresistible!

Though I dont know if my moving there plan will ever work out, but having a ‘Kakósúpa’ goes straight into my bucket list!

HI. I’m someone who is thinking of studying in the University of Iceland, in Reykjavik. I have never been to this place, so I would like to know how the standard of education is there, for undergraduate students. Also, if there are good courses provided in English, and if they are free. I would also like to know about the average accommodation in the city and if the costs are high. And lastly, if it is easy to find a job in Iceland.
Thank you.

the rent is very high in Reykjavik, but you could find cheaper flats in surrounding towns, and take a bus to uni. You should be able to find all educational answers on the uni website. http://www.hi.is
Good luck!

I have a good friend since adolescence age. I moved to Iceland, she to New Zealand. Last years was, maybe is, New Zealand popular for migration, so I asked her if there is really so very good life. Answer was simple. “Grass is elsewhere green.” 🙂

Hey! Great post 🙂
Anywho, I’m a 16 year old who loves travelling and am especially fascinated by Iceland. I plan to move there after I complete university here in Canada. I was wondering what some high paying jobs are that Iceland is really in need of, so that obtaining a visa would be easy. Also, my parents and I have both Austrian and Canadian citizenship. Since Austria doesn’t allow dual citizenship and we are living in Canada, should I renew my Austrian citizenship in order to easily move to Iceland? I know I have a lot of time but I’m a planning-type person lol. Thanks great folks!

An absolutely great list! I have always wanted to visit Iceland, not necessarily for the obvious tourist type attractions, but more to experience the culture and the people, anything else is a bonus.

I find it quite funny to a certain degree, as I recently asked my wife if she would consider relocating to Iceland upon her retirement in four years. For some reason she thought that I was quite mad. I suspect that she would really like to retire to Spain or Italy instead. 🙂

As for me, I would quite like to follow a simpler life, spend all my days in my workshop, making, restoring, and generally being creative. Not because I have to, but because I want to.

I’m an Indian Doctor and i would be glad to settle in Iceland.Will the people accept me.Or is racism still prevalent there? As it is a highly literate nation i believe i wouldnt find any such issues.Please Reply 🙂

Going to Iceland in a few weeks (mid september). Just exited to breath the air and eat good food in Reykjavik! Me and my love will explore for a full week from the capital. Amaze about a «icelandik poutine», since I’m from Québec, inventors or the dish 🙂

Fantastic read. I’ve had a couple of the most enjoyable holidays of my life in Iceland.
At home I hate the cold, but there it was so different I actually enjoyed being all dressed up and facing the elements. I have to live on my memories now s I’m getting on in years, but I will never stop reading and learning about that beautiful country and it’s lovely people.
Fen.W